Forget Bipeds: Here Are the Weird Ways Life Could Exist in Our Solar System

Researchers at Cornell have proposed a kind of nitrogen-based life that could exist in the frigid temperatures of Saturn's moon Titan. Here are a few other crazy-sounding proposals for life that could exists in our own backyard.

We've been hunting for life on Mars and have started putting our eyes toward Europa and a few other places, but life could be far, far weirder than that. Here's where else we might find life in our solar system.

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Macro Life on Europa

Wikimedia Commons

Jupiter's moon Europa, with its possible subsurface ocean, is high on the list of worlds that could support life. But some proposals go beyond looking for the kinds of microbes we might find on Mars and propose that we could find even bigger life, whether that's hydrothermal vent worms (like on Earth) or even "fish," though they'd look fairly different from anything we know.

Floaters On Jupiter

PBS

In the original "Cosmos," Carl Sagan proposed a few forms of life that could exist in the clouds of Jupiter. He called them floaters, sinkers, and hunters. They would be ammonia-based organisms, with the floaters working like giant balloons. The sinkers would throw spores of offspring up into the clouds; as they drift downward, the floaters would feast on them. At the top of the food chain are hunters, who feast on the floaters.

Hydrogen Peroxide Life on Mars

NASA

On Earth, hydrogen peroxide is used as a disinfectant because of its ability to break down cell walls. But on Mars, a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and water could be just the thing for life to feast on—its freezing point would be much lower than that of plain water. One scientist, Joop Houtkooper, thinks that NASA's 1970s Viking missions to Mars may have found life during their soil tests – and killed it by drowning it with water. If it had used a half-and-half solution Houtkooper says, NASA might have found martian organisms way back then.

Life on Ceres

NASA JPL

Where there's liquid water there is the possibility for life, and recent evidence suggests that there's liquid water on Ceres, the dwarf planet nestled in the asteroid belt that was once thought to be a lifeless rock. Because thebright lightsthat the Dawn spacecraft has spotted during its approach are believed to be volcanic in origin, that would suggest Ceres has the geological activity to keep a subsurface ocean in a liquid state.

Venus Cloud Layers

Wikimedia Commons

The surface of Venus is a boiling hellscape, but its clouds are far more temperate. They have atmospheric pressures like that on Earth and temperatures just a little hotter. Plus there's water vapor and oxygen in those layers, leading some to believe that there may, in fact, be life on Venus—just not the kind George Adamski claimed. One proposal that could find it? A human outpost in the skies of Venus.

Enceladus

If we mention Europa, we have to mention Saturn's moon Enceladus, the number two candidate for extraterrestrial life in our backyard. It has geysers more active than those on Europa, hinting at a subterranean liquid water ocean, giving this tiny moon of Saturn a fighting chance at being home to even multicellular life.

Pluto (or Charon)

NASA

On the surface, Pluto and Charon are some of the most inhospitable places in the solar system, with surface temperatures beyond the realm of frigid. But as New Horizons revealed, Pluto has signs of past geologic activity that may run to today, and there is mounting evidence of liquid oceans under either due to some internal heating mechanism.

Nitrogen life on Titan

NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/Cornell

Many scientists suspect that Titan could be a pre-biotic environment. It's cold – very cold – but all the ingredients are there, including rich organic molecules. But there could be life there now, in a weird, unfamiliar way: an entirely different chemistry based on nitrogen. In this scenario, nitrogen would be a key to life surviving cold temperatures.

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